Thursday, July 12, 2012

At last! My new old desk and vanity arrived from the vast wasteland - somewhere - out there - and they got here safely. This desk is just absolutely wonderful. Built 1947-1949 by the Heywood Wakefield company, this is the "Kneehole Desk" M 315 W. I love it. I love it.

Here it is with the chair out of the way. That's my teeny-tiny paper shredder underneath it. I didn't want my little printer on top of it glomming everything up so I put it on a little box at the side which was built by AngelSpouse some years ago. It seems to work perfectly and there is an opening in the box on the wall side that hides all the cords. I hate cords. Unfortunately, they are mostly necessary.

As you can see, I'm not the only one who likes this desk. Hmmmm.... how can I fit in here?

Ahhhh! There we go. Perfect!

This vanity took absolutely forever to get here. At least it seemed that way. And even then I had to make a pattern of the top so that a piece of glass could be cut for it. My pattern wasn't the smoothest in the world and the glass people cut the danged thing exactly by the pattern I made. This left the little crescent-shaped cutout at the front and center not as smooth as I would have liked - but hey! I have glass on my vanity and now it's fully useable.

This is the Heywood Wakefield "Riviera Vanity" M 186 and "Revolving Pouffe" M 187 made in 1947-1948.

You will notice that there used to be a crescent-shaped piece of glass that fit just in the center section of the vanity just beneath the level of the vanity top. But I decided I wanted the entire top protected by glass and so I had a single piece cut to cover it and give me a working surface at the same time.

I love this vanity. The only thing I don't love is the height. Way back in the "olden days" it seems that vanities were pretty low to the floor. This makes it just a little bit awkward for me so AngelSpouse is building me a set of risers for the feet to raise it by about 3 to 3 1/2 inches.

A closer look with the flash shows how well kept this piece has been through all these years.

And a view without the flash gives a truer picture of the actual lovely champagne color.

All my "beauty junk" has been moved into the drawers; makeup, nail polishes and do-dads, and my perfumes and colognes. Don't I just feel ritzy sitting there now with my own space to do all those girly things that girly-girls do?

These pieces are so pretty I can't wait to finish this post so I can go see how it looks. This is my nostalgic voyage into the past. As I admire these Mid-Century Modern pieces I wonder who first owned them and what their lives were like. I wonder who sat before the mirror and if she admired herself there before her senior prom or before her wedding. I wonder who used the desk. A business person? An artist? A student? I'll never know, but it's fun to wonder about and to imagine they were happy and had good lives.

Friday, May 25, 2012

This is My Other Old Desk that also has to go - again a victim of a fit of nostalgia on my part.

This one has to go because some glass-fronted boxes (that my husband just loves) had to be moved from a closet to make room for another piece of furniture that had to be moved out of my boudoir in order to make room for my newest nostalgic acquisition.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

In the process of collecting small, irresistible bottles - mostly perfume bottles - I came across this thingy which, for some incomprehensible reason, I simply could not do without. (An eye-roll here would be more than appropriate.)

I have no idea what, exactly, it is. But it appears, to me, to be some sort of apothecary jar/bottle thingy. Notice that the "stopper" doesn't really "stop" anything. It just loosely dangles there inside the bottle, itself stopped from falling to the bottom by the little knob located about 2 inches from the top.

Since anything inside this bottle would certainly evaporate, I am at a loss to know for what purpose it could have been used. The dangly stopper thingy that doesn't stop anything is 7 and 1/8th inches in total length. The bottle itself is 6 and 3/8th inches tall and 1 and 3/8th inches in diameter. Properly put together, the whole thing is 8 and 1/2 inches tall.

It's a bottle certainly not meant to hold perfume which is too precious to allow to evaporate. Anything containing alcohol would not last long within it.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Go away for a little while and come back and..... Don't Recognize Anything!
What happened to the dashboard? How do I know if any comments are waiting for me?
I'm a Stranger in a Strange Land. Help me, Obiwan!

Friday, February 3, 2012

If you have not yet read "Lo", you are missing a wonderful treat. I am, in fact, quite honored that she chose to pass along this particular blog award to me. I've spent many wonderful minutes reading her blog and shaking my head and laughing. She's not just a hoot - she's also a very smart lady. Please visit her first chance you get.

Now it falls to me to find 5 (five???) other bloggers who have less than 200 followers in order to pass this award along. Sigh. This may take some time. It is, you know....TAX TIME! ;o)

AND...I'm not a very active blogger lately (thus, my amazement that Lo enjoys "me" enough to have given me the award in the first place) and most of the blogs I follow have forty million other followers.

But I will give it a go - and get back to you on this at a later date.

A big "Thank You" to Lo - Do go visit her wonderful blog. Now. Go now. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Just do it. She's right here: It's Always Something ;o)

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Well, there it sits. Taunting me. Don't be fooled by the little green blankie covering it up during the long intervals of non-use. The blankie is cat barf insurance. And when you have a cat that periodically barfs - wherever she happens to be - cat barf insurance is well worth the expense and trouble.

They say these things are easy to set up. Well... maybe if you are a very big and very strong man. It took myself and my husband and a set of those little teflon furniture-moving sliders to get it into the living room. Once there, the box was opened and we stood there, silently, mouths open, wondering what on earth to do next. Read the instructions, right?

Yeah. Right. Read the instructions. Bwahahahahahahaha!
Excuse me. But that was funny.

Lots of styrofoam - sheets - posts - blocks. And plastic sheeting. But wait! All was not lost. The box contained all the parts. ALL of them. Heck fire! I was ahead of the game already. And, and hour or so later, the thing was put together and I was on board with the safety key in hand. I've owned one of these things before so I know what to do with the safety key. Can't fool me. No sir.

I plugged in the safety key and pressed "START". Nothing. Ummmmmmmm. What the heck? Press "START" again. Nothing. Again. Damn! Did we hook it up wrong? No. Don't think so. Pretty sure we did everything just as directed by the .... Bwahahahahahahahah!.... instructions.

We look around. No on or off button. That's strange. What is this? An APPLE product? Steve Jobs have a hand in this design? ;o)

Search the console. No button. Look around look around. Aha! An on/off button - WAY down near the floor on the very front of the "thing." Flipped the button. Got back on the torture track part and pressed "START."

The belt began to move. I began to walk. Faster. Faster. RAMMING SPEED!

Now I'm in for it. Now I have no excuses anymore for not exercising.
My god. What have I done???

Friday, January 20, 2012

It doesn't often snow here in western Washington state. We have a very mild climate considering how far north we actually are. But for the past 3 or 4 days it has been snowing almost constantly. Soft, tiny, downy white flakes of snow. Once even big poofy flakes of snow.

This is the view out my living room window of my neighbor's house across the street. Do notice that I still have my "Happy Lights" up. My neighbor came over day before yesterday and asked if she and her kids could use my driveway to sled in the snow. Her driveway, as you can see, is not very steep and is pretty short to boot while mine....

As you can see, my driveway is steep (steeper than it looks in the photo) and long. It continues up and out of the range of the photo to the right for another good 30 feet, at least. Her 12-year-old daughter and her little brother (about 3 or 4) went sledding down the driveway the past couple of days - having a great time on their little plastic sleds.

The sleds are about the only color in the neighborhood right now - except....
Just take a look at what I saw a few minutes ago:

Isn't he just gorgeous?!!! Or...maybe it's a "she". I never can tell the difference with Jays.

Then, looking out the windows to the driveway side, I spotted this lovely thing:

And another paused from munching on my trees long enough to give her a good look:

There were two others just to the right of this girl. Two males with small antlers munching on my trees. Hard to find a decent meal in the snow:

Normally, I have a lovely view of the Olympic mountains from my living room windows, but today (and for the past several days) they have been hidden behind clouds. In fact, for a while I could not even see the land just there across the bay. Everything is white and gray:

But inside, all is snug and warm.

I hope you enjoyed the view from my windows this morning. We do have a Winter Wonderland out there. I, however, am staying inside.